Because some people believe that pro-reform strategies drive increases in crime, Brennan Center researchers evaluated those claims, drawing on recent crime data and an understanding of how the criminal justice system works in practice. They found no evidence that pro-reform prosecutors are responsible for crime rising or falling.
The new Brennan Center analysis is part of the center’s larger series, Myths and Facts About Crime and Justice Reform.
To conduct the analysis, researchers looked at pro-reform prosecutors that “have developed approaches that aim to reduce racial and economic disparities and unjust outcomes in the legal system — such as excessive sentences or the criminalization of poverty through cash bail — while preserving public safety.”
This stance is not the same as political allegiance, the researchers make clear. “Far from a unified group, these prosecutors bring many different approaches to their work. They span the political spectrum and are found in urban and rural jurisdictions alike.” They narrowed their analysis to prosecutors who campaigned on or promised to reimagine the role of their office to broadly reduce unjust disparities in the justice system and decrease unnecessary incarceration.
Using data collected by the Council on Criminal Justice, Brennan Center analysts compared aggravated assault, larceny, and homicide trends in cities with pro-reform prosecutors to trends in cities without pro-reform prosecutors.
“Assault and larceny were selected because of their frequency, allowing clearer analysis, and because they are more likely to be affected by prosecutorial decision-making,” they write. “Murder was chosen because of its seriousness and because those crimes spiked sharply during the first two years of the Covid-19 pandemic.”
Charts within the analysis illustrate the results: crime trends are not meaningfully different between cities with pro-reform prosecutors and cities without pro-reform prosecutors.
For each group, Brennan Center plotted the average percentage change in crime rates from a 2018 baseline. The effects of seasonal variation and the Covid-19 pandemic are broadly similar, and the net changes in aggravated assault, larceny, and homicide rates between 2018 and 2024 are remarkably alike. Neither group sees drastically better or worse outcomes.
“This research undermines the idea that pro-reform prosecutors cause crime to increase,” the Brennan Center researchers conclude. “To be sure, our analysis does not account for differences in local conditions or contexts. For example, the cities in our sample with pro-reform prosecutors are generally larger than those with more traditional prosecutors. Yet the lack of differentiation between the two groups ultimately suggests that other variables, including economic, political, and social factors, may provide more plausible explanations for crime trends.”
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